One Dies in Shooting Near Long Island Mall

One person was killed and another was seriously wounded in Nassau County on Wednesday after being shot by a gunman who was angered over a business deal gone bad, the authorities said.

The gunman, who fled and set off a manhunt, was identified by the police as Sang Ho Kim, 63, of Fresh Meadows, Queens.

The shooting occurred just after 10 a.m. at a light fixture company on South Street in East Garden City, N.Y., only blocks from the Roosevelt Field mall. Shortly after, there was a strong police response.

Streets were closed, shoppers were screened as they left the mall, schools were locked down, and vehicles were stopped and searched. With a recent bloody terrorist attack on a mall in Kenya and a mass shooting at the Washington Navy Yard still in the news, many residents were alarmed when they saw the burst of law enforcement activity.

Steven Skrynecki, the Nassau County police chief, held an afternoon news conference to try to put to rest any fears that the shooting was a prelude to something larger.

“There is nothing to suggest that this individual is on a random shooting rampage,” Chief Skrynecki said.

While the investigation is in its early stages, he said, the police believe that Mr. Kim knew his victims and was angry about a business deal.

“The motive here appears to be work related,” Chief Skrynecki said. After the shooting, he said, Mr. Kim drove off in a white 2008 Honda Pilot. The chief then cautioned, “We believe that this suspect is armed and very dangerous.”

The owner and an employee of the light company, Savenergy, were shot. The police did not immediately release their names, and it was unclear who had died.

A woman who identified herself as Mr. Kim’s wife but who declined to give her name said in a telephone interview that her husband was “victimized” by his boss, the owner of Savenergy. She said her husband and the owner had been good friends for more than a decade through their church.

Sobbing and speaking in Korean, she said her husband was being forced to resign from his job installing LED lights as a contractor for the company. She said he was owed more than $10,000.

“He couldn’t sleep well,” she said. “His chest filled with anger.”

On Wednesday morning, when her husband left their home and headed to the office in Garden City to try to settle the dispute, she said, she became concerned.

“I had a strange feeling,” she said, adding that she called him four times, “and he didn’t pick up the phone.”

In their hunt for the gunman, the police searched the campuses of Nassau Community College and Hofstra University. They were assisted by the New York Police Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Jasmine Alston, 20, who works at the Macy’s at the Roosevelt Field mall, said that she was let out of the building after her shift ended at 1:45 p.m. but that the mall itself was still closed at that time to people seeking to enter. She said the shutdown was uneventful: no announcements were made, and Macy’s workers learned of the lockdown from customers or colleagues who called from outside. Even after becoming aware, she said, “some people were still shopping.”

Boss’s Kindness Repaid With a Burst of Violence

By MARC SANTORA and SARAH MASLIN NIR
Published: September 26, 2013

It was at church where John Choi met the man accused of shooting him.

Sang Ho Kim, 63, was out of work, drinking too much and generally lost. He had been arrested several times, including for driving while intoxicated. He had left his first wife in South Korea, married, divorced and married again. Nothing he did seemed to work out the way he wanted and, often, he blamed those around him for his failures.

Mr. Choi, 68, arrived in New York from Seoul, penniless, four decades ago. His first job was selling wigs for Jewish women in Herald Square and, because his boss learned that he was the only employee not skimming profits, he was promoted. He saved up and bought a deli, then a carwash. Eventually he and his wife, Christine, 67, started Savenergy, a business selling energy-efficient LED light fixtures.

A year ago, after they met at the Hyo Shin Bible Presbyterian Church in Queens, Mr. Choi offered Mr. Kim a job. More than a job, it was a chance to get his life back on track.

But what started with an act of Christian kindness turned into a nasty business dispute and ended in a bloody rampage.

On Wednesday, the police say, Mr. Kim walked into Mr. Choi’s office in East Garden City, N.Y., pulled a gun and shot him in the head. They said he also shot and killed Yong Jae Shin, a young man who worked at the company.

On Thursday, at Nassau University Medical Center, his face bandaged where the bullet had entered and narrowly missed his brain, Mr. Choi had a simple message for Mr. Kim, whom the police were still seeking: Turn to Jesus. Heaven is not out of reach.

Alice Corey, 36, Mr. Choi’s daughter, said such a gesture of forgiveness was a reflection of the life her father tried to lead, including his job offer to Mr. Kim.

“He had no friends, and no job, and my parents said let’s give him a second chance,” she said.

David C. Lee, a close family friend who helped found an advocacy group, Korean-American Public Affairs Committee, with Mr. Choi, said that extending a helping hand came naturally to his friend.

“Mr. Choi is a good Samaritan,” he said. “He tries to help any person.”

But problems arose nearly as soon as Mr. Kim started working at Savenergy. He was brusque, demanding and domineering, according to other employees. Although Mr. Kim worked in the field, he showed up daily unannounced at the Garden City headquarters.

Always dressed in a brown suit, and imposing at 6 feet 2 inches, he intimidated colleagues and demanded his commissions before deals were closed; he was also paid $37 an hour, Ms. Corey said. According to a co-worker, he once said to a colleague that if a client did not sign a contract with the company, he would “throw a grenade” in the front window of the client’s store.

Ms. Corey, who also worked at Savenergy, said she found Mr. Kim’s presence so menacing that she quit and begged her parents to fire him.

“I said, ‘Dad and Mom, I love you, I know of your Christian faith and you love to help people, but you’re not Jesus Christ; don’t act like Jesus Christ,’ ” she said. “ ‘Everyone is scared of him.’ ”

But Mr. Choi, who started Savenergy with his wife because they believed that environmental stewardship was part of their Christian ethic, relished giving jobs to those out of work and was known for it in his church community. Yet about four months ago, Mr. Choi relented and began to cut back Mr. Kim’s hours.

Another dispute arose, this one between Mr. Kim and Mr. Shin. Mr. Kim did work at Mr. Shin’s parents’ home, but they believed the work was shoddy and refused payment, according to fellow employees.

When Mr. Kim entered the office on Wednesday, he said he was looking for Mr. Shin, who was talking with Mr. Choi.

Surrounded by his family in his hospital bed on Thursday, Mr. Choi, who was unable to speak, wrote notes praising God and the young man who had been killed. At one point he drew a picture of the shooting, showing how Mr. Kim shot him first, then Mr. Shin.

Mr. Kim’s family disputed the account provided by Mr. Choi and other employees. While not denying that Mr. Kim shot Mr. Choi and Mr. Shin, Mr. Kim’s wife of three years and his sister both said they believed he had been ill treated at work.

After the shooting, Mr. Kim fled in his white Honda Pilot, setting off a manhunt that has sprawled from Long Island to Dutchess County, involving hundreds of police officers and prompting lockdowns in several normally placid suburbs. As the police searched for a man they considered armed and dangerous, they closed streets, set up roadblocks, locked down nearby schools and colleges and screened shoppers leaving a mall.

Mr. Kim’s car was found late on Wednesday in Putnam County, but by Thursday evening, the police were still searching for him. Law enforcement officials said the search was focused on the village of Cold Spring, where the car was found, about 60 miles north of Times Square.

The police said the shooting was the result of a workplace dispute and identified Mr. Kim as the only suspect, releasing his photo to the news media and asking the public for their assistance.

For the families and friends of the victims, they were left wondering how an act of kindness could end in bloodshed.

“Can you believe such a good man got this much tragedy?” Mr. Lee asked.

Mr. Kim’s sister, a resident of Syosset, N.Y., who asked not to be named, said that last week, her brother told her that he believed that files on his computer at work had been deleted so that he would not have to be paid.

The last word she got from her brother was about two hours after the shooting, when he left a voice message. He did not express remorse, but rather, provided instructions with what to do with his body should he be found dead.

“If I die, don’t put me in the land,” he said, according to the sister. “Cremate me and put me in my mother’s dying place.”

Garden City Shooter Body Found in the Hudson River Sang Ho Kim, found in Rockland County

By Maria Vultaggio on September 30 2013 4:12 PM
Police believe Sang Ho Kim, the man accused of shooting two and killing one in Garden City, Long Island Wednesday, was found dead. A sail boater called authorities after spotting a body that washed ashore in the Hudson River just south of the Bear Mountain Bridge around 9 a.m., News 12 wrote Monday.

Police have not yet confirmed the identity of the body the was found on the shore of Iona Island, which is 25 miles from where his white SUV was found empty on Wednesday evening after the shooting took place.

There has been a massive 4-day manhunt for Kim after the 63-year-old allegedly opened fire at Savenergy, a lighting business near the Roosevelt Field Mall, but that seems to have come to an end now. On Saturday, authorities believed the accused has committed suicide after his sister said he left a threatening voicemail on her cell phone.

“We hope to see this ending today,” Hollywood Life quoted a spokesperson for the Putnam County sheriff. “We’re going to continue to hunt the suspect down.”

Kim supposedly shot the two victims after he felt he had been “cheated out of a lot of money,” Newsday wrote. He thought Yong Jae Shin, 25, who he killed and owner of Savenergy, John Choi, who he critically injured for not giving him the amount of money he thought he deserved after they worked on a combined project.

"He apparently thought he had been slighted and denied what was owed to him,” a law enforcement official told the news site. Kim’s sister, who didn’t want to be named, add to the news site that Choi didn’t pay Kim. "My brother gave him a warning,” she said.

On Tuesday, Choi and Kim were supposed to meet to discuss the business discrepancy, but apparently Choi never showed up. "He went there and nobody's there. My brother got really, really mad,” she told Newsday.

Body of Suspect in L.I. Shootings Is Discovered in the Hudson River

The body of the man who the authorities said shot two people at his former workplace on Long Island was discovered on Monday in the Hudson River, the Putnam County Sheriff’s Department said.

A recreational boater came across the body of Sang Ho Kim, 63, around 8:30 a.m. near Iona Island, a marshy landmass just south of the Bear Mountain Bridge.

Mr. Kim’s widow said in a telephone interview that the location was near where his mother’s ashes were scattered several years ago.

His white Honda Pilot was found abandoned on Wednesday evening about eight miles away, near Cold Spring. That morning, the police say, he walked into Savenergy, a company in East Garden City, and shot his former boss, John Choi, and a store employee, Yong Jae Shin, in a dispute over money he believed he was owed. Mr. Shin died.

“The tragic violence in East Garden City and the search for Mr. Kim in our local community caused fear and apprehension for many folks,” the Putnam sheriff, Donald B. Smith, said in a statement. “Today’s events have at least allowed us to turn the page on what was a scary chapter for local residents.”

A manhunt led to lockdowns at several schools across the county, north of New York City, and involved over 100 law enforcement agents, some of whom were dropped from helicopters to search mountainous terrain.

Mr. Choi, the owner of the energy company, was in critical but stable condition on Monday, according to his family. A wake for Mr. Shin was held on Sunday in Flushing, Queens.